


Old & Brutal Ways

by reine_des_corbeaux



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alcohol, Ambiguously off-page murder, Bacchanal, Camilla-centric, Canon Compliant, POV Third Person, References to the Bacchae, Supernatural Elements, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 11:59:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: What might have happened during the bacchanal, from Camilla's perspective.





	Old & Brutal Ways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deliarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliarium/gifts).



> I was inspired by both your Camilla-centric prompt and your "what happened during the bacchanal" prompt, so I decided to write you a little of both. Hope you enjoy!

_ Who is Dionysus?  _

_ The god of ecstasy and terror, of wildness and of the most blessed deliverance— the mad god whose appearance sends mankind into madness _

_ — _ Walter F. Otto,  _ Dionysus: Myth and Cult _

 

They must have paused for breath between prayers, let the wild dancing slow, temporarily halted the riotous roil of ecstatic bodies just before something manifested itself as fundamentally different from the other attempted bacchanals. Camilla sat in the shadow of an oak tree, the trunk thick with ivy. The night had descended into the usual stickiness, the usual drunken blur of sex and dance and muttering all the right hymns in all the wrong accents. She was tired, and sweat trailed down her back beneath the flimsy chiton. Looking up through the oak’s bare canopy, Camilla could see the stars gleaming coldly. The moon, a thin, waning thumbnail, disappeared behind a shred of cloud. It was then she felt the warmth.  _ Odd, that.  _ Idly, she remembered the warmth earlier in the day, futile preparations for a ritual that wasn’t going to work.

***

_ Three Hours Earlier  _

No one, Camilla was certain, thought they were actually going to encounter anything like the sublime. Dionysiac madness was probably beyond a bunch of twentieth century college students wrapped in bedsheets. Perhaps it would be best to call the whole thing off and retreat back to the safety and comfort of lighted windows and warm rooms. They could drink in peace there, untroubled by the mystic dangers of the wood, questioning no longer. 

Henry’s eyes were set upon the road, his hands clasped tightly on the steering wheel. If anyone amongst them believed that they might actually succeed, might actually stage a reasonably successful bacchanal, it was him. 

“Do you think it was wrong of us to leave Bunny behind?” Charles asked.

“ _ God,  _ no,” said Francis, shuddering theatrically. “He’s not serious at all about this.” 

Camilla shared the sentiment. Bunny had been the one incongruity in all the prior attempts, along for the alcohol and the larks, not the mystic wonder of standing on a hillside, hoping to see something. 

“Richard might’ve been alright,” Francis continued, breaking her trance. “He’d at least have something of the necessary attitude.” 

“We barely know Richard. He’s nice enough, I suppose, but really, he’d be just as much of a burden as Bunny was,” Charles countered. 

“No one would be as much of a burden as Bunny.” 

The sound of her own voice surprised Camilla; she hadn’t meant to speak. She was even more surprised when Henry added to the conversation.

“She’s right. If anyone was unnecessary, it was Bunny. Richard is just a stranger. He doesn’t understand these things yet, so it’s best he doesn’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if he came to understand, though. He wants it enough.” 

Henry didn’t look away from the road as they veered around a familiar turn, towards the skeletal trees. He parked out of the way, far from the prying path of passing headlights, and the whole group began to untangle itself from the car, to pass necessary accessories.  The frantic whirl of preparations began. 

The sun was fully down by now, and the air was biting cold, nipping at Camilla’s bare shoulders. Her ghostly breath steamed in front of her. Every evening, she thought, seemed to get colder. The days were shortening, the nights were lengthening, and winter would be upon them soon. She had a sneaking suspicion that tonight was the last time they would try, no matter what happened. 

***

In retrospect, she decided that she must have it all sooner, noticed how absurdly bright the ivy looked in the faint light of their ritual bonfire. It was a living, pulsating green, not the cakey, frosted black it should have been in such low light. Drunk as she was, Camilla initially ignored the shifting colors. 

The vines, when they appeared, were another matter entirely. 

Grapes, no matter the season, were not native to Vermont, and they certainly were not usual in the depths of autumn or the bitterness of an early frost. At first, they looked like another trick of the firelight, another imposition from a drunken mind. Camilla blinked; the grapes did not disappear. Instead, the vines climbed higher up the trees. 

“Are you seeing this?” she whispered, the words rasping on a wine-numbed tongue. 

The faces of the others were hidden from her, the firelight obscuring them to little more than chitons and raised arms. She wanted to join them in the ring dance, but she was bewitched by the grape vines twining in the trees above her. 

“Look!” she called out in Greek, hoping to attract someone’s attention to her. “The trees!” 

Charles heard her, looked up. Camilla examined his upturned, briefly illuminated face. His eyes were glossy with the haze of drunkenness. She could tell that he saw nothing. Was she crazy? She was certain she wasn’t and that if she was, it wasn’t bog-standard insanity. Whatever this was, it felt sacred and utterly alive. Camilla shuddered. There was something ancient humming in her very bones. She watched the trunk of the oak, the ivy and the vines all twining together, with her mouth hanging slightly open, a half-formed cry lodged in her throat. 

Then the tree burst into flames. 

Someone (was it Henry? It sounded like Henry, a low voice unused to releasing its own power) let out an echoing noise of alarm. So they had all seen it too-- this tree giving up itself to the madness of fire.

The humming in her bones was intense, like a swarm of insects beneath Camilla’s skin. She felt a sudden urge to run, as if giving herself up to the frenzy of the night whatever hummed inside her. The tree burned brightly in front of her.

She did only what she could: she ran past it. She felt the warmth of the flames, but they did not burn her, and the smoke did not blind her as she ran through the darkness, towards whatever lay beyond her immediate line of vision, shedding herself as she went. 

_ I am a deer,  _ Camilla thought.  _ I am a creature of woods and of darkness. It is my duty to run until I find whatever I am looking for _ . 

Sensation overtook her as she ran, a feeling of being both hunted and followed.  _ This must be what it is like to be prey, but to what?  _ Outrunning her pursuers was easy, but outrunning the humming from within was more difficult. Even in this deer-like state, Camilla had a sense that whatever she was searching for was not to be found in reality. But was she even  _ in  _ reality any longer? The ground tore at her feet; the brilliant fires of the trees burned. The night was growing kaleidoscopic, fragmenting and reforming. 

_ Release yourself,  _ the darkness seemed to cry, inside her and all around her.  _ Give yourself up to Me.  _

She screamed then, wordless and piercing and wild. In another life, in another state of being, she would have remembered reading  _ The Bacchae  _ and she would have wondered if Agave had felt this same scintillation of disintegration, caught in the thrill of a lion hunt for her own son. But Camilla the classicist had been discarded somewhere behind her in the burning forest, and the Camilla of the present was alone in the dark. A powerful pain tore through her and she screamed again as the small noises of the forest crescendoed to a deafening roar. She looked ahead with bleary, intoxicated eyes and saw a small clearing. Within the clearing, she was sure, someone awaited. This was the pulsing center of it all. 

As she entered the grove, the feeling of pursuit vanished, as if had been blocked out. Camilla slowed. All around, the flaming trees glowed with a dimmed light, as if their radiance had been swallowed by some kind of shadow. The air around her pulsated — was the sound drums or was it the beating of an enormous heart? Bewildered, Camilla looked around, her eyes falling upon the only thing in the clearing she seemed to be able to see. 

Later, she would be unable to describe the One; the Presence before her. The air in the clearing was hot and cold at once, and the sound of running water mixed with the crackling of the flames. Beneath her skin, the buzzing was everywhere, and Camilla felt as if she hummed in tune with the glade, with the Presence. 

The One inclined his head towards her. He was at once huge and yet only the size of a person, a baffling, contradicting whole. She breathed in a heady scent of dying plants and new earth, breathed in the bitter aroma of wine. 

“Dionysus,” she breathed before speech was sucked from her lips by the buzzing life pulse of the One. 

Mute, she stood in wonder, reached out her hand to touch him, though instinctively she knew it would be impossible. The buzzing calmed when she reached out her hand. The fires dwindled. She felt so very near to everything that it hurt. 

When the Presence spoke, it was in no language Camilla knew, but she understood, somehow, what he said. The words flowed through her mind and tangled with her thoughts. 

_ My own my own be one with me surrender to the dance to the fury to the love to the madness to death to life to rise again be destruction and creation rend and be rent _

She shivered in the light and the heat of the burning trees, and reached out again to the deity. Green snakes, broad and shining in the leaping light, spiraled up her arms. They were heavy against her skin, smooth and cool, and they did not frighten her. The snakes were living jewelry in the Presence of a living god. 

_ fear nothing you are fear itself  _

The Presence extended one hand (if it could be called a hand), the suggestion of a cup cradled within it. 

_ drink  _

“Yes,” Camilla said softly, and accepted the cup as easily as if it had been a glass of wine handed to her by Francis or Charles or Henry on a summer’s day. 

She placed the thing, a simple clay cup, to her lips, and took a few sips of the dark liquid within. It was bitter and earthy, smelling strongly of overripe fruit. A warmth shot through her, burning her throat on the way down as if she was drinking something much stronger than wine. Gasping, she looked up. The snakes slid along her arms, and the Presence had something like a smile on his face. 

_ mine my wild one my hunter _

The wine, or whatever it had been, still burned within her, and before her mind went completely blank, one question for the darkness fluttered through her mind. 

_ Was this how Agave felt before the madness overtook her and she ripped her own son apart?  _

But when she opened her mouth to ask it, only an inhuman scream burst out. 

“ _ EUOI!”  _

With that word, everything changed. It was as though the Presence was with her and within her; the world blurred and sped up. Was she running? Was she dancing? She didn’t know. She wasn’t even quite sure who or what  she was. Was she anything at all? Here there were no absolutes besides absolute being, a thrilling vertiginous unity.

_ And what is beauty?  _

_ Terror.  _

She was infinite, flame and water at once, snake and vine and deer; a thousand living things crushed together into one perfect, painful whole. Around her, she felt others, white, wispy forms in the light, another part of the great wholeness. 

And then one of the forms shrieked out. 

“Outsider!” he cried, and she was surprised to understand his words. 

There was something foul in their circle now, something rotten and unholy. It was not worthy of these ceremonials. One of the others lashed out at it, at this thing, this prey. It gasped in pain, then yelled when it was hit again. The follower of the Presence grew angry. It was not right for something so foul to be in their circle. She raised her snake-traced arms, as if to ward it away.

“ _ EUOI! _ ” she screamed again, and other voices joined her like howling. 

They circled, hungry and feral, around the fallen interloper. She was filled with the urge to destroy and consume as she cast her eyes upwards, to the warm and spiraling stars, and brought her arms down with a sudden, sharp motion. 

_ REND DESTROY THE ONE WHO IS NOT WANTED  _

It was as if the Presence was screaming all around them. 

_ REND TEAR FLESH FROM BONE _

They dove in, converging on the thing as if it was a meal to be eaten, leaping upon it like wildcats upon a deer. She was first, her hands clawing, to pull away flesh and shatter bone, her voice raised in one perfect, delirious cry. 

***

Camilla came to feeling stiff and sticky, words just beyond her grasp. Her feet were cool, soothed. She was, she decided, perfectly calm. The bleary greyness of dawn was all around her, fire and snakes and the horrible wonder of the Presence gone entirely. She looked down, and was mildly surprised to notice that she was sitting on the banks of a river, feet dangling in the water. It should have been more than mildly cold at this time of the year. Or should it not? Was it autumn or winter? She wasn’t sure. 

“Camilla? Camilla?” 

Someone was calling behind her. Two someones, actually. Their voices were hoarse, as if screams had rubbed them raw. 

“Camilla! What are you doing in the river? Camilla!” 

_ Yes, that is my name. You can stop screaming now.  _

She opened her mouth but no words came out. The words were there, certainly, but they’d somehow been jumbled and vanished before they reached her tongue. Charles gaped at her, as if she was somehow no longer the same person he’d known. 

_ Am I really so different?  _

Again, the words were lost. Camilla looked down to the dark, swirling water. It was starting to pain her feet. The cold stabbed unpleasantly at her skin, and she removed her feet from the water, and stood shakily, smoothing her chiton. It was pure white, and her hands were clean. That didn’t seem right. 

“Your hair is red,” her brother said. His voice sounded far away.

Camilla reached up to touch it. Her hand came away sticky with congealing blood. She examined the reddish stain with an uncomprehending wonder. Then, standing, she allowed Charles to take her gently by the hand and lead her from the riverbank. She followed him back through the listless trees to Francis, blinking and groggy on the ground. His chiton was filthy, ripped full of holes and smeared with unidentifiable brown stains. Henry stood beside him, his glasses flecked with blood. At their feet, crumpled, was the mutilated corpse of what was once a man. 

“What the fuck,” said Francis, “did we do?” 

“Killed a man,” Henry replied, his voice flat.

_ We did more than I ever thought possible _ , Camilla wanted to say. But she was afraid to open her mouth now, afraid of both her own silence, and the terrible power of the cry she’d uttered in the night.  

***

Months later, after it had all happened, after Bunny was interred, Richard would ask her what happened, standing out in the rain, surrounded by black-clad mourners. He had that vague, hungry look on his face that he was never quite able to disguise. It was, Camilla thought, at once tragic and a little irritating. He wanted what the four of them had had that night, and it was so obvious in his eyes. However, Camilla wasn’t entirely certain that Richard even knew what he craved. 

It would be easy to tell him that he should turn away from woods and darkness and return to California, but what was to say that he wouldn’t simply lose himself a different way there? That was another kind of Bacchic madness, wasn’t it? Endless parties, endless sun, an endless desire for something unnamable? It was all just another quest for the sublime. 

“What was it like?” Richard asked, and Camilla could hear the studied quenching of curiosity in his tone. 

“In the woods? Henry told you most of it.” 

But she told him the rest, quickly and efficiently, leaving out the important things. She was aware that she was intriguing Richard, because he was always intrigued by her. But there was nothing else Camilla could do. There was nothing else that could be said. To tell him about the Presence, about Dionysus, would be insane. To tell him about what it felt like to rip at a man’s flesh would be too disturbing. And it would be too much to tell Richard the rest. The rest made Camilla a little afraid of herself. 

If she said it aloud, she would have to admit everything. She would have to admit how she’d loved the power of holding a life in her hands as much as she’d loved the terrifying oneness of being. And she would have to admit how much she wanted to return to the giddy power of being at one with the god, that bright euphoria of letting everything release into the ecstasy of destruction. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title's a quote from Anne Carson's translator's note poem in her translation of _Bakkhai_ (which I'd read prior to starting to write this fic. Hence why all the Bacchae references crawled in). Otherwise, a lot of this has been inspired by rustling about in indexes for things about Dionysus and rituals in his honor. I apologize for any errors, as Ancient Greek ritual is not my field of study.


End file.
